Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on our new podcast segment, Tell Me More.

Recommended

John Wick: Chapter Two (Film, US, Chad Stahelski, 2017) The latest in the operatic-action franchise pits decreasingly reluctant hitman John Wick (Keanu Reeves) against the Camorra and every other hitman in New York. Expands the original’s insane wainscot murderverse without breaking it, and adds the two best set-piece gunfights in the series. –KH

Kilo Two Bravo (Film, UK, Paul Katis, 2014) British soldiers in Afghanistan’s Helmand province face an escalating horror show after one of them steps on a landmine in a dried-up river bed. Utterly naturalistic treatment heightens the situation’s harrowing suspense and physical suffering. Based on a real incident. Also known as Kajaki.—RDL

The Queen Pedauque (Fiction, Anatole France, 1893) Unworldly cook’s son follows his tutor, a bibulous, womanizing priest, into the service of an aristocratic alchemist who wants him to mate with a fire elemental. Saucy satire skewers occultists, atheists and Catholics. —RDL

Good

I Live in Fear (Film, Japan, Akira Kurosawa, 1955) Blustering foundry owner terrified by the H-Bomb (Toshiro Mifune) informs his family he’s moving them to Brazil, prompting them to go to court to have him declared mentally incompetent. Social drama about irreconcilably stalemated characters lets Mifune, then 35, act a big old-age transformation and gives Kurosawa a reason to explore the compositional possibilities of cramped, over-populated spaces.—RDL

The Sand-Reckoner (Fiction, Gillian Bradshaw, 2000) Engaging novel centers on Archimedes’ return to a thinly sketched Syracuse from an offstage Alexandria, and the beginnings of his career as engineer (and would-be in-law) to King Hieron II. For a novel of the First Punic War there’s a lot of flute-playing and precious little conflict, save within the breast of Archimedes’ Roman slave Marcus. –KH

Okay

The Atlas of Cursed Places (Nonfiction, Oliver Le Carrer, 2015) Ranging from the archaeological (the tophet of Carthage) to the supernatural (the door to Hell in Stull, Kansas) to the environmental (the subterranean coal fires in Jharia, India) to the political (Gaza) to the natural (Sable Island) this compendium of 40 “bad places” should be much better than it is. The maps are reprinted 19th-century work and usually at far too small a scale; the scanty text is slightly woo-woo Wikipediac prose. –KH

Not Recommended

Captain Fantastic (Film, US, Matt Ross, 2016) When his wife dies, a driven idealist (Viggo Mortensen) who has been home-schooling their large brood as forest-dwelling, adorably radical ubermenschen must take them into the fallen world of strip malls and smartphones. Spends two acts developing a thorny dramatic conflict, and the third act wheeling out an array of writing cheats to avoid having to really reckon with it.—RDL

Wish to introduce innocent children to the horror of the Mythos, while remaining on budget? Atlas Games is here to affordably twist young minds with a buy two, get one free deal on Ken’s Mini Mythos line of childrens’ book parodies: Where the Deep Ones Are, Cliffourd the Big Red God, and Antarctic Express.

Want to plunge headlong into Lovecraftian mystery, but lack a gaming group? Want to introduce a friend or loved one to the roleplaying hobby? GUMSHOE One-2-One has come to your rescue! Find this new system by some guy named Robin D. Laws, in the line’s flagship title, Cthulhu Confidential. Now pre-ordering at the Pelgrane Press store. Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer!

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on our new podcast segment, Tell Me More.

Recommended

Beware the Slenderman (Film, US, Irene Taylor Brodsky, 2016) Eerie calm pervades this documentary exploration of the 2014 incident in which two 12-year-old girls tried to murder a classmate in the belief that this would protect them from the Internet horror character Slender Man. This story becomes a little more explicable but all the more unsettling as Brodsky fills in the complicated human stories behind the initial news accounts.—RDL

Bohemian Paris of Today (Nonfiction, William Chambers Morrow, 1899) Daily life in Belle Epoque Paris as experienced by American art students, from hazing rituals at the École des Beaux Arts to a pub crawl through such classic Montmartre haunts as the Moulin Rouge, Mirliton, Hell, and Tavern of the Dead. Penned with a raconteur’s aplomb, this is a sourcebook for players of my forthcoming Yellow King RPG, from the point of view of the characters. Don’t you think beating your deadline by 118 years is just a tad show-offy, William Chambers Morrow?—RDL

Hell or High Water (Film, US, David Mackenzie) West Texas brothers (Chris Pine, Ben Foster) go on a bank robbing spree to prevent foreclosure on their late mother’s underwater mortgage, pursued by a pain-in-the-ass Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) and his long-suffering partner (Gil Birmingham.) Elegiac contemporary oater pushes the Death of the West all the way to up the Great Recession.—RDL

The Lego Batman Movie (Film, US, Chris McKay, 2017) Riotous mayhem in the Lego movie tradition suffuses every frame (pixel? stud?) and lets the kid-friendly message (“Even Batman needs friends and family!”) go down easy. You’ll probably wind up buying the Blu-Ray and freeze-framing every 20 seconds to get all the visual jokes; not all the verbal jokes work but their sheer number, speed, and scope ensure plenty of hits anyway. Will Arnett’s childlike badass continues to climb the all-time Batman rankings, and wonder of wonders Michael Cera keeps up as Robin. –KH

The OA (Television, US, Netflix, Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij, 2016) Returning to her suburban home seven years after her disappearance, no longer blind, an enigmatic young woman (Marling) gathers a group of high school misfits to hear her story of strange captivity. Contemporary mad science fantasy shows formal audacity in both its rigorous fidelity to a searching, straight-faced emotional tone and in its readiness to explode viewer expectations.—RDL

Good

The Arrows of Hercules (Fiction, L. Sprague de Camp, 1965) De Camp’s breezy historical novel stars Zopyros of Tarentum, who may or may not have invented the catapult for Dionysios I of Syracuse around 397 BC. Flat prose and thin characters notwithstanding, first-rate research and cribs from Greek poetry ballast the book. One wishes de Camp had expanded on the bureaucratic plots possible in the world’s first weapons research laboratory. –KH

Slow Horses (Fiction, Mick Herron, 2010) MI5 screwups banished to busywork at “Slough House” get sucked (and suckered) into an ongoing operation and of course discover their inner strengths, humiliate their snooty rivals, and save the day (sort of) through teamwork. Engaging if paper-thin read, with a fun habit of constantly seeding misdirection throughout the narrative to keep the reader on their toes. –KH

Sleepers awake, and travel through the secret pathways of the occulted world to preorder the new edition of Unknown Armies from Atlas Games. From the deluxe printed edition to ebooks in a variety of formats, the weird wonders of UA beckon!

Want to plunge headlong into Lovecraftian mystery, but lack a gaming group? Want to introduce a friend or loved one to the roleplaying hobby? GUMSHOE One-2-One has come to your rescue! Find this new system by some guy named Robin D. Laws, in the line’s flagship title, Cthulhu Confidential. Now pre-ordering at the Pelgrane Press store. Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer!

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on our new podcast segment, Tell Me More.

Recommended

Blindsight (Fiction, Peter Watts, 2006) A spaceship crewed by near-transhumans and commanded by a vampire makes first contact in the Oort Cloud while parrying the aliens’ incursion. The genetic reconstruction of an extinct human subspecies of vampires is only about the fifth-wildest concept herein, but it should get you through the door of this classic-style ideas-and-aliens hard SF novel. –KH

Disco Dancer (Film, India, Babbar Subhash, 1982) Now that he’s a rising star as a disco singer/guitarist, a former street musician returns to Mumbai to avenge the false imprisonment of his mother. Simultaneously an exuberant backstage musical and a bloody revenge actioner, in no way contaminated by subtlety. Kooky costumes! Blazing Bollywood funk! Star-crossed romance! Class consciousness! Unremitting melodrama! Jarring transitions! Separate musical numbers in praise of Krishna and Jesus! A quasi-cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star!” Bump down a notch if you don’t think this is the sort of thing that ought to be 135 minutes long.—RDL

The Locket (Film, US, John Brahm, 1946) A traumatic childhood incident leaves an outwardly poised and charming woman (Laraine Day) with a penchant for jewelry theft and murder, bringing woe to a string of men. Delightfully outre neo-Freudian noir melodrama told in flashbacks within flashbacks.—RDL

Loving (Film, US, Jeff Nichols, 2016) Interracial husband and wife Richard and Mildred Loving (Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga) struggle to lead ordinary, quiet lives together, which in their home state of Virginia in 1958 is a criminal offense. Subtly engaging biopic succeeds at the tough task of centering a film narrative around undemonstrative protagonists whose goal is to simply be left alone.—RDL

Good

Monsieur Lecoq (Fiction, France, Émile Gaboriau, 1868) Brilliant yet unseasoned policeman investigates the mysterious prisoner behind a wine-shop triple murder, aided by a determined magistrate and an admiring older sidekick. I guess if you invent the police precinct crime novel 90 years before Ed McBain it’s churlish of us to expect you to figure out endings, too. Until then, redolent with then-contemporary Parisian grit and detail.—RDL

Okay

The Accountant (Film, US, Gavin O’Connor, 2016) “High-functioning autistic” accountant (Ben Affleck) built into a killing machine for some reason by his protective father obsessively-compulsively solves a tricky corporate embezzlement problem by murdering his way to the embezzler, who is protected by his own murder team headed by a delightful Jon Bernthal. Also a Treasury agent is hunting Affleck because he works for organized crime and terrorists, but he’s the good guy because he saves Anna Kendrick. Even without the iffy “autism as superpower” thing this movie would be a mess, and only Affleck’s war-against-himself performance (and the suspicion that a real-life Batman would look way more like this guy) holds it together at all. –KH

Phoenix (Film, Germany, Christian Petzold, 2014) After reconstructive surgery to repair injuries suffered in a death camp renders her unrecognizable, a woman who refuses to believe that her husband denounced her to the Nazis seeks him out in Berlin. Twisty melodramatic premise belied by in an overly austere, emotionally withholding directing style.—RDL

Not Recommended

Fury (Film, US, David Ayer, 2014) Traumatized tank crew consisting of gruff sergeant (Brad Pitt), raw recruit (Logan Lerman), preacher man (Shia LaBeouf), meathead (Jon Bernthal), and ethnic guy (Michael Peña) push into Germany during the final desperate days of WWII. The first two acts of war horror would be quite something if they were more than just stake-setting for a third-act shift into ridiculous heroics.—RDL

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (Film, US, Edward Zwick, 2016) Reacher (Tom Cruise) takes a break from walking the land righting wrongs when his contact in the Army’s Military Police (Cobie Smulders) is arrested on trumped-up treason charges. You’ll never guess why: corrupt military contractors! Do they start killing everyone around the case while ineptly threatening Reacher? You bet! Also he needlessly endangers his possible daughter (Danika Yarosh) who then needlessly endangers herself some more. Also there is running and some dull fights. Cruise intentionally mutes his charisma as Reacher, leaving nothing here to surprise or interest anyone who has seen more than three thrillers in their life. –KH

In the Gaming Hut we ask ourselves how far rules and GM influence should go to prevent the players from idiot plotting their own characters.

Speaking of gaming the system, esteemed Patreon backer Jeremy Forbing acts as a stalking horse for a certain shadowy figure to convene the Politics Hut. With a mysterious knowledge of Ken’s thought processes, Jeremy asks for his theory on how Trump will destroy the Republican party.

On the Crime Blotter we find a report about Los Angeles organized crime in 1937, which just coincidentally happens to feature in Cthulhu Confidential.

Finally at the behest of backer and Hillfolk illustrator Jan Pospisil, the Eliptony Hut considers the connection between Rhesus blood factor and survivors of Atlantis.

Sleepers awake, and travel through the secret pathways of the occulted world to preorder the new edition of Unknown Armies from Atlas Games. From the deluxe printed edition to ebooks in a variety of formats, the weird wonders of UA beckon!

Want to plunge headlong into Lovecraftian mystery, but lack a gaming group? Want to introduce a friend or loved one to the roleplaying hobby? GUMSHOE One-2-One has come to your rescue! Find this new system by some guy named Robin D. Laws, in the line’s flagship title, Cthulhu Confidential. Now pre-ordering at the Pelgrane Press store. Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer!

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on our new podcast segment, Tell Me More.

The Pinnacle

Manchester By the Sea (Film, US, Kenneth Lonergan, 2016) After his brother dies, a closed-off custodian (Casey Affleck) discovers he’s been appointed guardian of his teenage nephew, which would require him to move back to the town that suffocates him with the guilt of his tragic past. Powerfully rendered drama without a frame of sentimental fakery.—RDL

Recommended

3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man (Comics, Matt Kindt, 2009) The stories of the “World’s Tallest Man” told (in Kindt’s loose watercolor) by his mother, wife, and daughter — including his brief career with the CIA. The result is a weird cross between Roald Dahl and Graham Greene. –KH

Black Dahlia (Comics, Rick Geary, 2016) The latest in Geary’s precise, controlled evocations of famous crimes reconstructs Elizabeth Short’s life and the investigation of her death. While the words give “just the facts,” Geary’s art bursts with life and emotion. –KH

Bone Tomahawk (Film, US, S. Craig Zahler, 2015) When troglodytes abduct a woman (Lili Simmons) and a deputy from the town jail, her injured husband (Patrick Wilson), a taciturn sheriff (Kurt Russell), an arrogant Indian killer (Matthew Fox) and a talkative old-timer (Richard Jenkins) head into the wilderness to effect a rescue. Nerdtroped men-on-a-mission Western ably combines, in a sentence I do not believe I am writing, Charles Portis-style dialogue and cannibal horror.—RDL

Very Semi-Serious (Film, US, Leah Wolchok, 2015) Documentary profiles Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, and its roster of cartoonists, from still-active nonagenarian George Booth to the latest up-and-comers. Informative look inside the creative and professional process of the nichiest of niche markets.—RDL

Good

The Book of Negroes (TV mini-series, Canada, Clement Virgo, 2015) Former slave Aminata Diallo (Aunjanue Ellis) recounts the events of her life, from capture as a child in Africa, to servitude in the US south and quasi-freedom in New York City and Nova Scotia, to a group of English abolitionists. Solid if inevitably softened adaptation of the Lawrence Hill novel, which you may know by its former US title, Somebody Knows My Name.—RDL

Okay

A Little Chaos (Film, UK, Alan Rickman, 2014) A woman working in the man’s field of landscape architecture (Kate Winslet) gets a rare opportunity to design an innovative fountain for Louis XIV (Alan Rickman) at Versailles. Although this period drama’s unfocused script fails to properly establish and develop the protagonist’s dramatic conflict, it does turn suddenly magical whenever Winslet and Rickman share a scene together.—RDL

Sleepers awake, and travel through the secret pathways of the occulted world to preorder the new edition of Unknown Armies from Atlas Games. From the deluxe printed edition to ebooks in a variety of formats, the weird wonders of UA beckon!

Want to plunge headlong into Lovecraftian mystery, but lack a gaming group? Want to introduce a friend or loved one to the roleplaying hobby? GUMSHOE One-2-One has come to your rescue! Find this new system by some guy named Robin D. Laws, in the line’s flagship title, Cthulhu Confidential. Now pre-ordering at the Pelgrane Press store. Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer!